Unconstitutional Spending

The federal government, the 10th Amendment and why we should give more power to the states.

The U.S. Constitution's 10th Amendment is arguably the most important of all the amendments in the brilliant document that helped shape the United States. The 10th amendment made plain that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
What the 10th amendment tells us is that the powers of the federal government are quite limited, and that any powers not enumerated to Washington in the first nine amendments automatically revert to the states. This was the founders' way of keeping the federal government small so that individuals could choose the kind of government they wanted based on the state in which they chose to live.
Of course, with politicians on both sides of the aisle driven by incentives that have told them to ignore the 10th amendment, Americans suffer under laws and bureaucracies created in Washington that would not exist had politicians adhered to the Constitution's limiting ways. Simply put, nothing in the Constitution allows for the existence of the Departments of Education, Commerce and Energy (to name a few), government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae ( FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac ( FRE - news - people ), or ineffective bureaucracies such as the SEC and the FDA.
Throughout this decade, under Presidents Bush and Obama, economic "stimulus" packages have similarly been foisted on the U.S. economy by a federal government possessing nothing not already taxed or borrowed from the private sector. Nothing in the Constitution mentions "economic growth" as one of the federal government's powers--the founders knew that with freedom came economic growth--but politicians being politicians, they've never let economic crises of their own making go to waste--Constitution be damned.
Where simple spending is considered, Washington's disdain for the Constitution becomes even more unsettling. As the Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl recently noted in the Washington Times, federal spending includes $2.6 million for the training of "Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job," $3.9 million for the SEC to rearrange "desks and offices at its Washington headquarters" and nearly $1 million for the shipping of "two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas," along with the improper use of government credit cards for the purchase of goods including "lingerie, iPods, XBoxes, jewelry, Internet dating services and Hawaiian vacations."
Clearly none of this wasteful spending was needed for the federal government to handle the very limited powers enumerated to it by the Constitution, and that was the whole point of the 10th amendment. Washington's powers would be limited so that citizens could choose their governments locally while keeping an eye on their activities.
That there were no federal income taxes until early in the 20th century was a certain offshoot of the meaning of the 10th amendment. The Founders' knew well that governments only grow, so in explicitly limiting the role of the federal government in our lives, citizens could wisely choose the government regime (and the level of taxation) they would live under. If lots of services and powerful politicians floated their boats, they could live in New York, while if they wanted to live in a state that spent and taxed much less, they could, for instance, move to Texas.
With government activities and spending based locally, Americans were essentially free to choose how much or how little power they would hand over. The federal tax burden was meant to be the smallest of all, precisely because the Constitution made plain that Washington's powers would once again be limited to what the first nine amendments allowed.
At present, the vision of the founders has been turned on its head. Rather than being able to choose the government of their liking on a state-by-state or city-by-city basis, Americans are captives of a federal government that has blatantly ignored the Constitution on the way to ascribing itself myriad powers and a taxing authority meant to pay for activities that, at best, should be left to cities and states.
This should be remembered the next time there's a discussion of federal taxation in the U.S. Indeed, while the freedom-loving may long for a simplified federal flat tax, in ascribing the power of taxation to the federal government to pay for all sorts of unconstitutional programs, we are blindly handing Washington powers never intended for it.
The better path at this point would be for all of us to demand more from our elected leadership. Specifically, we should demand that they cease talking of reduced federal spending and taxes in favor of a real discussion of the proper role of the federal government itself. Politicians need to be reminded that the Constitution is real, and that as opposed to reducing various programs that are unconstitutional, those programs should be abolished.
So while the level of federal taxation is important when it comes to economic growth, it to some degree misses the point. Federal spending is an equally huge burden on the economy for Washington taxing and borrowing from the private sector in order to fund initiatives that a proper reading of the Constitution would not allow.
In short, if we truly desire a greatly reduced tax burden, it's well past time we force politicians to consider the constitutionality of the various spending programs and bureaucracies that burden us. Only then will we see power returned to the cities and states such that levels of taxation actually decline.
John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, a senior economist with H.C. Wainwright Economics and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.

The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama

A foreign policy of penance has won America no friends.

By FOUAD AJAMI

'He talks too much," a Saudi academic in Jeddah, who had once been smitten with Barack Obama, recently observed to me of America's 44th president. He has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory.
He is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.
He has not made the world anew, history did not bend to his will, the Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms, and the theocrats in Iran have not "unclenched their fist," nor have they abandoned their nuclear quest.
There is little Mr. Obama can do about this disenchantment. He can't journey to Turkey to tell its Islamist leaders and political class that a decade of anti-American scapegoating is all forgiven and was the product of American policies—he has already done that. He can't journey to Cairo to tell the fabled "Arab street" that the Iraq war was a wasted war of choice, and that America earned the malice that came its way from Arab lands—he has already done that as well. He can't tell Muslims that America is not at war with Islam—he, like his predecessor, has said that time and again.
It was the norm for American liberalism during the Bush years to brandish the Pew Global Attitudes survey that told of America's decline in the eyes of foreign nations. Foreigners were saying what the liberals wanted said.
Now those surveys of 2009 bring findings from the world of Islam that confirm that the animus toward America has not been radically changed by the ascendancy of Mr. Obama. In the Palestinian territories, 15% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 82% have an unfavorable view. The Obama speech in Ankara didn't seem to help in Turkey, where the favorables are 14% and those unreconciled, 69%. In Egypt, a country that's reaped nearly 40 years of American aid, things stayed roughly the same: 27% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 70% do not. In Pakistan, a place of great consequence for American power, our standing has deteriorated: The unfavorables rose from 63% in 2008 to 68% this year.

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Martin Kozlowski 

 

Mr. Obama's election has not drained the swamps of anti-Americanism. That anti-Americanism is endemic to this region, an alibi and a scapegoat for nations, and their rulers, unwilling to break out of the grip of political autocracy and economic failure. It predated the presidency of George W. Bush and rages on during the Obama presidency.

We had once taken to the foreign world that quintessential American difference—the belief in liberty, a needed innocence to play off against the settled and complacent ways of older nations. The Obama approach is different.
Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.
The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity. "My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger," goes one of the Arab world's most honored maxims. The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.
Mr. Obama could not make up his mind: He was at one with "the people" and with the rulers who held them in subjugation. The people of Iran who took to the streets this past summer were betrayed by this hapless diplomacy—Mr. Obama was out to "engage" the terrible rulers that millions of Iranians were determined to be rid of.
On Nov. 4, on the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran, the embattled reformers, again in the streets, posed an embarrassing dilemma for American diplomacy: "Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them," they chanted. By not responding to these cries and continuing to "engage" Tehran's murderous regime, his choice was made clear. It wasn't one of American diplomacy's finest moments.

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Associated Press 

 

Mr. Obama has himself to blame for the disarray of his foreign policy. American arms had won a decent outcome in Iraq, but Mr. Obama would not claim it—it was his predecessor's war. Vigilance had kept the American homeland safe from terrorist attacks for seven long years under his predecessors, but he could never grant Bush policies the honor and credit they deserved. He had declared Afghanistan a war of necessity, but he seems to have his eye on the road out even as he is set to announce a troop increase in an address to be delivered tomorrow.

He was quick to assert, in the course of his exuberant campaign for president last year, that his diplomacy in South Asia would start with the standoff in Kashmir. In truth India had no interest in an international adjudication of Kashmir. What was settled during the partition in 1947 was there to stay. In recent days, Mr. Obama walked away from earlier ambitions. "Obviously, there are historic conflicts between India and Pakistan," he said. "It's not the place of the United States to try to, from the outside, resolve those conflicts."
Nor was he swayed by the fate of so many "peace plans" that have been floated over so many decades to resolve the fight between Arab and Jew over the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. Where George W. Bush offered the Palestinians the gift of clarity—statehood but only after the renunciation of terror and the break with maximalism—Mr. Obama signaled a return to the dead ways of the past: a peace process where America itself is broker and arbiter.
The Obama diplomacy had made a settlement freeze its starting point, when this was precisely the wrong place to begin. Israel has given up settlements before at the altar of peace—recall the historical accommodation with Egypt a quarter century ago. The right course would have set the question of settlements aside as it took up the broader challenge of radicalism in the region—the menace and swagger of Iran, the arsenal of Hamas and Hezbollah, the refusal of the Arab order of power to embrace in broad daylight the cause of peace with Israel.
The laws of gravity, the weight of history and of precedent, have caught up with the Obama presidency. We are beyond stirring speeches. The novelty of the Obama approach, and the Obama persona, has worn off. There is a whole American diplomatic tradition to draw upon—engagements made, wisdom acquired in the course of decades, and, yes, accounts to be settled with rogues and tyrannies. They might yet help this administration find its way out of a labyrinth of its own making.
Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2007).

 

The Nanny Financial State

Labor strips workers of financial guidance.

With very little media or public attention, the Obama Administration recently suspended a Bush-era rule to let employees get financial guidance from the advisers managing their 401(k) investments. The provision was designed to give average investors access to the kind of personal financial advice that is typically a privilege of the wealthy. Instead, they are likely to get no guidance at all.
The saga began in 2006 when bipartisan reforms to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act opened the door to greater personal financial services directed to the average investor. In 2008, the Labor Department proposed a rule to let the financial advisers who handle a company's 401(k) programs also provide financial guidance to employees. This means such well-known firms as Fidelity or Vanguard. The new team at Labor has now killed the rule out of supposed concern for conflicts of interest.
The claim is that because the advisers who run 401(k) and other retirement programs work with mutual fund companies and brokerages to sell investment products, they can't be trusted to provide investors with impartial advice. According to California Democrat George Miller, the rule would have "opened the door to unscrupulous advisers to make recommendations based on their financial stake and not in the best interest of workers."
Labor says it will issue an alternative rule, but we've been down this road before. When the investment guidance was being considered, two proposals were in play. The Bush Administration's plan allowed a company to hire a fund manager, and for the fund manager to provide investment advice as part of a package deal for the firm's employees. The plan had the advantage of being cost effective and easily used, with any potential conflict mitigated by disclosure and other safeguards.
At the time, the anti-Wall Street brigade led by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin insisted that advisers would inevitably "hoodwink" consumers into bad investments. They proposed that if companies wished to provide investment advice to their workers they be required to hire independent advisers, whose suggestions would supposedly be pristine and trustworthy. The costs of these outsiders would also be paid by the employer. That might be affordable for huge corporations, but the additional costs are prohibitive to many smaller businesses, which means most workers will end up having to fend for themselves.
Mr. Harkin is now back at it, this time as a committee chairman who wants to codify the new Labor language into law. The current Congress has already demonstrated its disdain for markets, but stripping employees of basic financial advice betrays outright hostility to the concept of individuals managing their own retirement investments.

 

ACORN considered name change

ACORN has been tripped up by voter registration fraud allegations and an undercover investigation which had its employees offering advice on how to set up a brothel and evade taxes.

ACORN, the troubled community service organization, recently considered changing its name in a bid to rehabilitate its image, according to an internal memo obtained by POLITICO.

The document, which will be released Tuesday as part of a Republican congressional forum on ACORN, illustrates the internal deliberation the group has undergone after a year of embarrassing scandals.

The document was found in Dumpster outside of an ACORN office in San Diego, a House Republican aide said. Derrick Roach, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for statehouse in California, took thousands of documents last week from the trash outside the office. An ACORN spokesman confirmed the veracity of the document.

ACORN has been tripped up by voter registration fraud allegations and an undercover investigation which had its employees offering advice on how to set up a brothel and evade taxes. Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, a law that cut off much of the organization’s federal funding.

“Our members are having a vigorous discussion about how to move forward most effectively to help working families win living wage jobs, stop foreclosures, and strengthen neighborhoods,” ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson said in a response to inquiries from POLITICO.

In an emailed statement, Levenson brushed off Tuesday’s Republican hearing.

“We believe their time would be better spent solving, as ACORN is doing, the foreclosure crisis,” Levenson said.

The memo addresses, in bullet-point format, the pros and cons of a new brand, saying that it has “spent 39 years building the reputation and track record of ACORN.” ACORN officials write that the bad image would “blow over” in the next year or two. And they believe that even with a name change, “right-wing attackers will say we are ACORN in disguise – so do we really gain much by going with a new name?”

The group does acknowledge that working with elected officials “is much harder now” and “while some foundations are still will to fund us, more are not.”

The one-page document also discusses the optics of a name change, saying it “should be very obvious that we are not going to choose a new name because funders or politicians want us to.”

The memo also acknowledges that it has encountered organizations and individuals who want to work with group but “can only do so if [ACORN changes] its name.”

“(W)e should probably think through this problem carefully and figure out what it all means for our ability to survive and thrive without losing a lot of ground over the next year or two,” the memo reads.

This week, Republican Reps. Darrell Issa of California and Lamar Smith of Texas are holding a forum on the ACORN, which will include state government officials and a former ACORN employee.

“The more we learn about the inner-working of ACORN and its affiliates, the more apparent it becomes that this organization is intentionally structured to deceive and mislead the American people,” Issa said in an emailed statement.

China, Gold and the Civilization Shift

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has covered world politics and economics for 25 years, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. He joined the Telegraph in 1991, serving as Washington correspondent and later Europe correspondent in Brussels. He is now International Business Editor in London.

Stephen Jen from the hedge fund Blue Gold Capital has a warning for those who think that gold has risen far too high, is necessarily in a speculative bubble, and must soon come clattering back down.

Mr Jen is an expert on sovereign wealth funds from his days at Morgan Stanley. The gold story — essentially — is that the rising economic powers of Asia, the Middle East, and the commodity bloc are rejecting Western fiat currencies. China, India, and Russia have all been buying gold on a large scale over recent months.
Why should that stop when the AAA club of sovereign debtors is pushing towards the danger threshold of 100pc of GDP?
These new players account for almost all the accumulation of foreign currency reserves worldwide over the last five years, so what they do matters enormously.
After crunching the numbers, Mr Jen found that the share of gold in their reserves is just 2.2pc compared to 38pc for the Old World (perhaps we should just call them the deadbeats from now on). They would have to buy $115bn of gold at current prices to raise their bullion to just 5pc of total reserves, and $700bn to reach just half western levels.
The killer-term here is at current prices since any such move in the tiny global market for gold would send prices into the stratosphere.
Mr Jen says that you know where you are in the currency markets — more or less — because there are concepts of “fair value” used by experts. Ditto for the equity markets, where you have P/E ratios (warts and all I might add, since the actual reported P/E of the S&P 500 was a record 141 in September before the agency stopped publishing the figure — a far cry from the forward earnings in vogue).
How on earth do we determine what fair value should be for gold? “We have no such concept,” he said. Actually, that is not quite true. You can use the dollar monetary base as a proxy.
Mr Jen said China alone accumulated $150bn in reserves in the third quarter, pushing the total to $2.3 trillion. These are colossal sums. China is amassing almost as much each month as the United States ($63bn) has built up in the entire history of the country. True, the US understates the value of its gold, but you get the picture. Something big is going on.
So far, China has just 1.7pc of its reserves in gold, or 34m troy ounces. I was told by a top Chinese official that they are buying on the dips so as not to crowd out the market, which means of course that gold cannot “crash” unless you think China itself is going to crash — or stop building reserves (which is possible: Albert Edwards from SocGen says China may be in current account deficit next year, leading to a yuan move — down, not up).
The gold proportions are: Hong Kong (0), Singapore (0), Korea (0.2), Brazil (0.6), India (4.8) after its shock purchase of IMF gold, and Russia (5.5). Yes, the West still has a lot in percentage terms — US (86), France (78), Italy (72), Switzerland (33), Germany (25) — but they don’t count for so much any more.
It is true that the Old World could meet demand for a while (a short while actually) by selling some of their gold. But will they do so? They did not use up their quota for the last year under the Washington accord. My own guess is that they too are wondering whether it makes any sense to keep selling metal in order to buy the fiat paper of the bankrupt peers (note that the Bank of England’s own pension fund has got rid of almost all its Gilts, buying inflation protection instead). Britain may become a net buyer of gold under the Tories, Who knows?
Bottom line: “The scope for EM central banks to buy more gold is substantial, if they choose to do so,” he wrote cautiously in a note to clients.
Will they choose to do so?
“I suspect they will,” he told me.
Personally, I have been feeling vertigo with gold near $1180. All my contrarian instincts cause me to dislike momentum stories — but there again, maybe this is not momentum. Perhaps it is a civilization shift. Can’t make up my mind.

We Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

By Victor Davis Hanson

When it comes to the problems facing this country, an old slogan comes to mind: "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet."
High unemployment, the recession and a terrorist resurgence in Afghanistan are bad enough. But there are a number of problems on the horizon that could dwarf President Obama's first-year trials.

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Why the pessimism? In short, we are doing nothing to prepare for the crises to come.
A global recession has led to low oil prices. Yet in this window of opportunity, America has not decreased its foreign-oil dependence. We are not encouraging domestic exploration. And we are still ambivalent on nuclear power.
But as the world economy recovers, oil will probably surge back over $100 a barrel, increasing our oil import tab by 25 percent or more. The Obama administration, though, mostly is obsessed with subsidizing relatively small amounts of wind and solar power. It likely won't be long before angry motorists at the pump are demanding to know why we have not pushed for more development at home of still-plentiful natural gas and oil fields.
Meanwhile, other economic bad news may be just around the corner. Today, interest rates on short-term Treasury bills still are less than 1 percent. But they, too, will climb as business picks up and worries over American inflation spread.
If we have to pay foreign lenders 5 percent to 7 percent interest on our debt, as in the past, the increased costs will gobble up additional billions from our annual budget. Yet sadly again, we are missing this rare opportunity of low interest to pay off cheaply the trillions that we already owe. Instead, we are borrowing even more!
The war on terror is also heating up again. Fairly or not, the Fort Hood massacre sent the message that the United States is more worried about appearing politically correct in matters of diversity than hunting down radical Islamists on its home soil. Those who seek to copy what happened at Fort Hood will be encouraged. And those charged with stopping them discouraged and confused.
Such uncertainty was reinforced by the attorney general's optional decision to try the architects of 9/11 in federal courts in New York City. At best, the confessed mass-murderer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will lecture the United States. At worst, one sympathetic juror could find the monster only 99 percent guilty, and therefore the court might fail to convict him of planning the murders of 3,000 innocent people.
After announcing a new strategy of counter-insurgency in March, and appointing Gen. Stanley McChrystal the new supreme commander in Afghanistan, it looks like Obama only now will commit more troops to Afghanistan. That will be a wise decision -- but one coming three months after the generals' request.
We were given an unexpected reprieve through the defeat of al-Qaida in Iraq. We can now build on that victory by routing the Taliban in the way the Iraq surge stabilized democracy there.
Finally, there is an array of taxes on the horizon -- increased federal income tax rates; promised hikes in health-care surcharge taxes; and even rumors of value-added federal sales taxes. These increases are said to be aimed at the proverbial wealthy. But that could change -- given that the top 5 percent of households already provide 60 percent of the nation's income-tax revenue. And many are already paying 50 percent to 60 percent of their incomes in combined local, state, federal and payroll taxes.
Just consider. The price of gas will soon likely increase. The cost of servicing our profligate borrowing will, too. One more terrorist attack like at Fort Hood, or nightly sermons from a grandstanding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or a new Taliban offensive, and the momentum could shift to radical Islam in their decades-long war against the United States. Next year's tax hikes will be real and large -- and no longer just this year's idle talk.
As these storm clouds gather, Congress bickers on Saturday nights about borrowing even more money for health-care reform, yet another federal entitlement.
If you thought things have been rough so far, hang on, 'cause you ain't seen nothing yet.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

The Desolate Wilderness

A chronicle of the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton.

Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof:


So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. XI, 16), and therein quieted their spirits.

When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love.
The next day they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loath to depart, their Reverend Pastor, falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with the most fervent prayers unto the Lord and His blessing; and then with mutual embraces and many tears they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them.

Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts.

Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.
If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.
These editorials have appeared annually since 1961.

And the Fair Land

'For all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators.'

Any one whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful.
This is indeed a big country, a rich country, in a way no array of figures can measure and so in a way past belief of those who have not seen it. Even those who journey through its Northeastern complex, into the Southern lands, across the central plains and to its Western slopes can only glimpse a measure of the bounty of America.
And a traveler cannot but be struck on his journey by the thought that this country, one day, can be even greater. America, though many know it not, is one of the great underdeveloped countries of the world; what it reaches for exceeds by far what it has grasped.
So the visitor returns thankful for much of what he has seen, and, in spite of everything, an optimist about what his country might be. Yet the visitor, if he is to make an honest report, must also note the air of unease that hangs everywhere.
For the traveler, as travelers have been always, is as much questioned as questioning. And for all the abundance he sees, he finds the questions put to him ask where men may repair for succor from the troubles that beset them.

His countrymen cannot forget the savage face of war. Too often they have been asked to fight in strange and distant places, for no clear purpose they could see and for no accomplishment they can measure. Their spirits are not quieted by the thought that the good and pleasant bounty that surrounds them can be destroyed in an instant by a single bomb. Yet they find no escape, for their survival and comfort now depend on unpredictable strangers in far-off corners of the globe.
How can they turn from melancholy when at home they see young arrayed against old, black against white, neighbor against neighbor, so that they stand in peril of social discord. Or not despair when they see that the cities and countryside are in need of repair, yet find themselves threatened by scarcities of the resources that sustain their way of life. Or when, in the face of these challenges, they turn for leadership to men in high places—only to find those men as frail as any others.
So sometimes the traveler is asked whence will come their succor. What is to preserve their abundance, or even their civility? How can they pass on to their children a nation as strong and free as the one they inherited from their forefathers? How is their country to endure these cruel storms that beset it from without and from within?
Of course the stranger cannot quiet their spirits. For it is true that everywhere men turn their eyes today much of the world has a truly wild and savage hue. No man, if he be truthful, can say that the specter of war is banished. Nor can he say that when men or communities are put upon their own resources they are sure of solace; nor be sure that men of diverse kinds and diverse views can live peaceably together in a time of troubles.

But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere—in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.
We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.
And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.

Media Missing the Plot on "Climate Gate": It's the Fraud Stupid

by Christopher C. Horner
To the credit of the New York Times, Associated Press and Washington Post — reliable outlets for promoting global warming alarmism, protecting those who craft it and marginalizing those who point out its weaknesses and excesses — they all ran stories in the past 48 hours addressing the documents somehow obtained from the computers of a UK university serving as the warming movement and industry’s Mother Ship. My great surprise is even greater because these outlets have demonstrated a pattern of only giving ink to embarrassing controversies after a week or so, once it appears that damage control is needed and the alarmists have gotten their story straight.

I documented this pattern in a book published one year ago this month, subtly titled “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.” The title says it all, including all that surely seems to have been affirmed by the documents posted, by “anonymous” on a Russian server and otherwise covering his tracks.
Since this affirms, not “reveals”, the scandal that so many have been explaining is the global warming industry, it also raises the issue of how can each of these media outlets still miss the plot? Well, they are doing so in a fashion so uniform, and in the face of such outrageous exposition of the scandal that is unfolding, that I conclude it is nonetheless yet another exercise in damage-control.
The emails, let alone the data still being combed over by the pointy-heads, plainly affirm everything I wrote, in detail, about the scams being run by the booming industry of Big Academia and Big Science suckling at the teat of the “global warming” panic they are also fostering.

I was by no means without company, but I did name and go into detail about all of the stars of this alleged correspondence, and how they are engaging in everything these documents appear to confirm. None of them lawyered up to challenge what I wrote. I suspect, however, that each and every one has retained counsel in the past few days, and not because they plan on suing anyone. They — rightly in my opinion — fear legal consequence as a result of what has been revealed. And not for writing nasty emails about people who disagree with them.
Yet the media have defined the story down, focusing on sideshow issues such as conspiring or hateful commentary about those who cause problems for the authors. Think of the wisdom of that approach: whose emails do not somewhere include such things? Surely this will also be proved with more emails stolen from skeptics’ computers, dispatching the story with an “everybody does it” narrative that entirely elides the meaning of the far more important admissions. Heck, Greenpeace used to peddle emails taken from my trash to the press, and got the Guardian and others to excerpt sections, out of context, with phony context padded around them and without calling me before running their “story”. That’s how they roll. They’ve no room for outrage. Still, that poses no resemblance to what’s going on now.
How it is possible that these media outlets’ regular “issue” reporters do not recognize the import of the fraud admitted to in the emails which, broadly, have been acknowledged as genuine?
Incidentally, also note how all of these outlets emphasize as fact, up front, that these documents, codes, data and emails are the product of “hackers” (this has grown from “a hacker” when the story first ran, though no outlet has offered any explanation for that change let alone evidence of the hacking). They simply accept that the University of East Anglia’s computers were hacked, on the word of people who are shown by what was hacked to be liars and charlatans and who have an interest in making the story be something other than the substance of the material.
I do not know if the computers were hacked. I do know that there is just as much reason to suspect that the documents were posted by someone on the inside who still possesses a conscience, a “whistleblower”. Remember that this incident occurred after the most recent and audacious twist in the university’s Climatic Research Unit refusal of access to basic raw data and other material necessary to validate their claims serving as the basis for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol (and Kyoto II), “cap-and-trade”, and so on. This was a four-year campaign to hide material — a campaign whose tactics were also admitted to in the alleged emails now made public.
After running out of excuses, in September CRU’s Phil Jones simply claimed that he had lost the data so, sorry, no, no one can check it. Implausible beyond comprehension. And if the emails are real and any indication of the way this group operates, deeply dishonest.
Soon thereafter someone went and downloaded material that, again if real, says enough, you are scandalizing and perverting “science”. This shall stop. Someone took it upon themselves to enforce a UK freedom of information act that its targets allegedly and apparently admit to subverting.
No matter how many stories seek to distract you with the shiny objects of prurient dialogue between sniveling, petulant and nasty global warming alarmists, that isn’t the story. The story is the exposition . Not the revelation, in fact, but merely the revelation of their affirmation of it.
I’m told by a cable news producer that, across the board, the green pressure groups, the supposedly “Concerned Scientists” (the even have a Union!), all of them are refusing to come out and speak to the issue. That could be because they understand that what is out is described by the material’s anonymous source as “a random sample.” There could be many more shoes to drop. Why hitch your organization further to the anchor threatening to sink a $7 billion per year (that’s just federal taxpayer-funding) industry? Live to fight another day. There will always be a new Man-as-agent-of-doom theory attracting college kids, Statists and wealthy elites.
This cannot simply be a three-day story about titillating emails. The edge seems to have been turned up on information proving everything we have been saying, often in great detail if to no media interest, for years. Kyoto II, “cap-and-trade” and EPA must all be stayed, at least so far as the U.S. is concerned, until the truth is outed and admitted to.

Now, Democrats Join Dick Cheney's Critique of Obama

President Obama is set to grant a blanket pardon shortly to this year's White House turkey (No, not him, the genuine fowl). 
But while Obama advised his cabinet Monday to take a little time off this week, presumably to give thanks and watch Detroit lose to Green Bay again, there's a real challenge for the 44th president to discern today: exactly what he should be thankful for. Never mind his slow, steady fade in the polls, matching the slow, steady rise in unemployment.
Although he's not in any election for nearly three more years, Obama's reputation, congressional clout and ability to accomplish pretty much anything is in serious jeopardy come next November's midterms, if not before. Former VP Dick Cheney, who single-handedly reinvented the wonderful Wyoming word "dithering" in recent weeks, is at Obama again (see video below) in no uncertain terms.
Which some might find predictable. But would they expect Arianna Huffington to be openly worrying that the Obama administration just doesn't get it about the economy and jobs? Or how about Leslie Gelb, former New York Times columnist, State and Defense Department official and now president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations?
He's calling Obama's recent Asia trip an unproductive waste of precious presidential time under the headline: "Amateur Hour at the White House."
What's going on here for The One chosen barely a year ago with such widespread hope and....

...elation, despite Republican warnings that as a legislator he had never actually managed a candy store, let alone a massive federal government? Obama vowed then to listen to the world once again, but after the long Asia trip produced awkward bows (see above and also over here), nice photos and little else, analysts find little indication that the world is listening to him.
First, Afghanistan: Eight months after Obama announced his first new strategy there and nearly three months after the ground commander submitted his recommendations for more troops, warning that the allies had about one more year to win or lose this thing, the Democrat is still meeting and talking about what to do. Aides say he wants to be careful. Maybe we'll hear next week.
Cheney spoke on Monday to prominent conservative radio talk show host Scott Hennen about the Obama White House:

"I worry that there's a lack of understanding there of what this [delay] means from the perspective of the troops. If you're out there on the line day in and day out and putting your life at risk on a voluntary basis for the nation and you see the commander-in-chief unable or appearing to be unable to make a decision about the way forward here, that raises serious doubts.
"Nobody wants to volunteer to participate in that kind of operation."

There's more of that on this video, and Cheney also calls the Fort Hood shootings terrorism outright. But that's not the only....



 


...incoming fire the president is taking now. Here's a piece of what Huffington just posted:

"There's a Category 5 storm about to make landfall, and the president and the officials in charge of preparing for the approaching disaster don't seem to be particularly worried. Sound familiar?
"Just as Katrina exposed critical weaknesses in the priorities and competence of the Bush administration, the unfolding unemployment disaster is threatening to do the same for the Obama White House."

Now, here's Gelb, who's worked for Democratic presidents, writing on the Daily Beast:

"The trip’s limited value per day of presidential effort suggests a disturbing amateurishness in managing America’s power.
"On top of the inexcusably clumsy review of Afghan policy and the fumbling of Mideast negotiations, the message for Mr. Obama should be clear: He should stare hard at the skills of his foreign-policy team and, more so, at his own dominant role in decision-making. Something is awry somewhere, and he’s got to fix it...
"...the Asia trip presented an important opportunity to carve out a new American leadership role in the world’s most dynamic economic region, and Mr. Obama missed it."

Other than that, it should be a good game.
-- Andrew Malcolm

How to Say Thanksgiving in Mandarin

Jewish-French-Irish-Chinese: a modern American family.

By SCOTT SIMON

Just in time for Thanksgiving, our oldest daughter's U.S. passport arrived. The photo inside shows a saucy 6-year-old girl, smiling slyly because just below her shoulders she is wearing her ballerina-fairy-princess Halloween costume. It is a marked contrast to the shot of the wailing, red-faced baby, tears dappling her cheeks like fat jewels, which was in her Chinese passport when she arrived in the U.S.
In the Chicago immigration office five years ago, we sat proudly alongside families from Poland, Ethiopia, South Korea, Kenya and El Salvador, their sons and daughters dressed in pressed white shirts and dark suits. An official in a broad brown hat called out our name.
"Well, everything seems in order," he said, and pointed to a place in the customs hall about 20 feet ahead. "When you cross that line, your little girl is a citizen of the United States."
Then he put one of his huge hands gently under our daughter's chin. "Welcome home, sweetheart," he told her.
I am forever indebted to China for the gift of our daughters. But I do not forget that frightened Chinese mothers had to give up their babies because of government policies that lead to the abandonment—and worse—of little girls. I was in tears as we carried Elise over that line and into America. I may never be able to do anything else as important for her.
We have come to think of Thanksgiving as a holiday for families like us: Those who know that America, whatever its sins, is a refuge in the world.
When my parents—a Jewish man and an Irish woman—married in the 1950s, they were warned, as transracial adoption families often are, that their children would face bigotry and hostility. But today, our 6-year-old niece Juliette, a California blond, slips her arm around the shoulders of our daughters and says, "We're cousins for life, right?"
Our Chinese children sit at the Passover table and scrounge for Easter eggs. They wear "South Side Irish" green scarves around their necks on St. Patrick's Day. It's all in the family.
My wife came home one day from our daughters' Chinese culture class to announce there would be no class next week. "Because of the Jewish holidays," she explained, straight-faced. Only in America. Our girls speak French, like their mother. My wife and I join our girls to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" in Mandarin. We've learned that families mixed by marriage or adoption don't shrink or starve a heritage. They nourish it with newcomers.
Our older daughter goes to first grade with Calix, Yoni, Sophia, Joel, two Zoes, Samir and Jade. You may think you can infer ethnicities from those names. But a few weeks ago, when I picked up Elise at the playground, she clambered across the monkey bars with a pal who is Asian.
The boy's father asked, "Your daughter is Chinese?"
"Yes," I told him. "Her name is Elise Jia-Mei. Excellent-Beautiful in Mandarin, as I'm sure you know. And what's your little boy's name?"
The Chinese father patted his son's head. "Dylan."
There are people who believe I am a little starry-eyed about the multicultural society that North America and a few other places have become. Perhaps. I have two daughters I want to grow up free from hurt. But I think my critics may forget the larger world in which we live.
Had our daughters stayed in China, they would face discrimination for being Hui, Miao, Mongol or any of the other of China's minority nationalities that they might be. Children adopted from Ethiopia might have grown up having to face the prejudice that Oromo, Sidamo or Gurage people contend with there.
I don't believe that having an African-American president, and Hispanic, Jewish and Asian judges, Nobel laureates, cabinet secretaries, movie stars and CEOs magically dispatches all bigotry and its bitter legacy. But someone of Luo descent has been elected president of the U.S. when ethnic strife seems to make a Luo president unfathomable in Kenya.
Race is singular and immutable. But Thanksgiving is a time to mark that in cities, towns and families across the country, people have grown to see ethnicity as merely one feature of our human makeup. To some, race will always overwhelm all other traits. But to millions more, it's just the way that small minds keep score.
When it comes to living with the risk of bigotry, I feel blessed to be able to take my chances—and more importantly, my children's chances—in America.
Mr. Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, is author of the novel "Windy City" (Random House, 2008) and the forthcoming nonfiction book about adoption, "Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other," which will be published next year by Random House.

 

The Great American Awakening

By Rep. Mike Pence on 11.23.09 @ 6:09AM

Washington, D.C. -- U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, delivered the following remarks last Thursday night at The American Spectator's  Robert L. Bartley Dinner:
(Remarks as delivered)
I stand before you today at an historic moment for the conservative movement and for this great country. The coming weeks and months may well set the course for this nation for a generation and beyond. How we as conservatives respond could well determine whether America retains her place as a beacon of hope in the world, or whether we slip into the abyss that has swallowed much of Europe in an avalanche of Socialism.‪
While some are prepared to write the obituary on capitalism and conservative values, I believe we are in the midst of a great American awakening. And it is breaking out all across this land, in townhalls and tea parties, coffee shops and church halls, in New Jersey and Virginia, and in the hearts and minds of everyday Americans, who are fed up with runaway federal spending, bailouts and takeovers by both parties and are saying with one voice: enough is enough.‪
The American people know what makes sense and what doesn't.
On the foreign stage, the American people know that weakness arouses evil. They know that bowing and kowtowing to foreign dictators only diminishes our standing in the world. And they know that standing idly by while the Ayatollahs in Iran crush innocent civilians, clamoring for free elections, is totally inconsistent with our history of standing with those who stand for freedom around the world. Ronald Reagan didn't stand before the Brandenburg Gate and say, "Mr. Gorbachev, that wall is none of our business." The American cause is freedom and in that cause we must never be silent again.
And the American people know that trying terrorists like ordinary criminals puts international public relations ahead of public safety and makes a mockery of American justice. This administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts in our civilian criminal courts is the most naïve and dangerous decision I have ever witnessed the United States government make. We should not be granting terrorists their wish to be tried at the scene of the worst enemy attack in American history.
We should not tell terrorists around the world that they have more rights if they kill Americans on our soil than if they kill Americans on the field of battle. The Obama administration must overturn this wrongheaded decision and try these enemy combatants in a military tribunal where they belong.
And on the home front, the American people know we can't borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy. And they know that one bailout after another, and one government takeover after another, will undermine our national character and relegate our national economy to the permanent economic decline.
The freedom to succeed must include the freedom to fail. Even as Ben Bernanke told me this week, capitalism without bankruptcy is like religion without hell.
When you look at the failed Democratic policies on stimulus, cap and trade and healthcare, it looks like their recovery strategy is, "the beatings will continue until morale improves." Democrat policies in Washington, D.C. are taking our economy from bad to worse. The unemployment rate in this country reached a 26-year high, 10.2 percent, the worst since 1983, and the national debt reaches 12 trillion dollars.
And where was President Obama this week? In China visiting our money and being lectured on monetary policy by communist dictators. But seriously, the image is striking: a President of the United States, flying on one more foreign junket, to one more glamorous capital, as our nation continues to struggle in the city and on the farm and unemployment rises to record levels.
To get this administration to focus on creating jobs, maybe the president should spend less time at the Great Wall of China and more time at Wal-Mart!
The American people know what works and what doesn't. We know the time-honored path to recovery is fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C. and fast-acting tax relief for working families, small businesses and family farms. And, to borrow a line from a great American, more and more Americans realize every day that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job, and a recovery is when Nancy Pelosi loses her job.
Clearly we've had it. But we see here tonight and at town hall meetings, tea party rallies across this country, and in the march on Washington in Washington, D.C., it is not the orchestrated theater of liberal special interest groups. It's authentic and it's powerful and it's real and it's American. And the American people know this is not just about dollars and cents, it's about who we are as a nation.
That became very clear to me about one year ago this weekend. It was in the aftermath of that Wall Street bailout vote. Along with a majority of House Republicans, I opposed that bailout not once, but twice. I just thought it was wrong to take $700 billion from Main Street and transfer it to Wall Street to pay for the bad decisions that had been made there.
You remember how it went. We stopped that bill once but the White House passed it over in the Senate, brought it back and rolled us. After it passed, I got on a plane to fly back to Indiana. Now you can probably tell that I'm a pretty upbeat guy, but that Saturday morning I was a little bit down. I was heartsick about what I'd seen our country do. But I had promised to speak at a Boy Scout jamboree in New Castle, Indiana, and I meant to keep that promise.
You know the scene. It was a cold October Saturday morning, a line of Boy Scouts, ties pulled to the side, one shirttail out, standing up straight. I gave them my best speech about American history and then a few adults waited to talk to me afterwards. A lot of them talked about the bailout vote from the day before, about where the economy was headed.
But there was one man standing off to the side, modestly dressed. And when the other adults dispersed, he walked up to me, hat in hand, and said words I'll never forget. He said, "Congressman, I'd seen in the newspaper that you were going to be out here. I lost my job yesterday, but I came out here to thank you for voting against that Wall Street bailout." I looked at him and I said, "Well, I'm sorry for your trouble, but I have to tell you, I admire your stand." And that American looked me in the eye that cold October morning and said words that are now chiseled on my heart. He said, "Congressman, I came by to thank you because I can get another job, but I can't get another country."
That man got it and he said it better than I ever could. The agenda of the left is about changing the very nature of this country, from a culture of independence to a culture of dependence on the state. As President Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech, it's "about whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives better for us than we can plan them for ourselves."
In 1999, Thomas Sowell predicted that the American left would attempt a "quiet repeal of the American Revolution." So what was the American revolution and is it possible to abandon or repeal?‪
For the answer, we need look no further than the writings of one of our founders, President John Adams. In response to a public debate that was raging over the origins of the American Revolution, John Adams wrote a series of letters over a period of several years, describing his views on the coming of the Revolution. In a letter addressed to Mr. Niles, written in Quincy on 13 February 1818, John Adams wrote:

But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People… The People of America had been educated in the habitual Affection for England as their Mother-Country; and while they thought her a kind and tender Parent (erroneously enough, however, for she never was such a Mother,) no Affection could be more sincere. But when they found her a cruel Beldam, willing, like Lady Macbeth, to "dash their Brains out," it is no Wonder if their filial Affections ceased and were changed into Indignation and horror. The radical Change in the Principles, Opinions, Sentiments and Affection of the People was the real American Revolution.

According to our second President, the real American Revolution was a revolution of self-reliance and independence, casting off dependency on the crown, in the hearts and minds of the American people. It was a rejection of the spirit of dependence in favor of a society of free and independent people.
As Thomas Sowell wrote, "What the American Revolution did was give the common man a voice, a veto, elbow room, and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of his 'betters.'" And, I submit, it is that revolution of independence and self-reliance that liberal elites are seeking to overturn. Barney Frank recently said, "We are trying on every front to increase the role of government." Not just the size but the role.
With the role of the federal government tightening every day on our economy, our finances, our natural resources, and our everyday lives, the common American values of life, liberty and limited government are being trampled by the urgency of the moment and the judgment of people who "know better" than everyday Americans.
The late Jack Kemp said words in 1996 at the Republican National Convention that speak to our time about the politicians and the political elites here in Washington. He said: "They don't have faith in people. They're elitists. They have faith in government. They think they know better than the people, but the truth is, there is a wisdom and intelligence in ordinary men and women far superior to the greatest so-called experts."
Washington, D.C. is overrun with such politicians -- people who consider the ideals of our Founding Fathers as quaint artifacts, as out of style as powdered wigs. Well, consider me quaint and out of style. I hold fast to the principles that minted this Republic: the unalienable rights to life, limited government, individual liberty, private property and due process of law. I took an oath to protect and defend these ideals. I vowed to bear obligation with true faith and allegiance. And if that's not quaint enough for you, I've even got a little of that powdered wig thing going.
And I'm happy to report that House Republicans are fighting to turn things around. But the reality is we just don't have the numbers. But there is a force in America great enough to redeem our national government and reaffirm our revolutionary ideals -- a minority in Congress, plus the American people, equals a majority.
Our 16th president knew that as well. Passing through my home state of Indiana, Abraham Lincoln stopped at the Clay Pool Hotel on 11 February 1861. Headed to Washington to assume the presidency, he said words that are now chiseled in a modest bronze plaque, and I quote: "I appeal to you, to constantly bear in mind that it is not with politicians, it is not with presidents, it is not with office seekers, but with you is the question: Shall the union and shall the liberties of the country be preserved?" Lincoln went on to say, "It is your business if the union of these states and the liberties of this people shall be lost, and it is your business to rise up."
So what is our part to play? What is your role in this unfolding drama? It is to rise up. To do freedom's work.‪ Like a great patron of conservative causes, the late J. Patrick Rooney of Indiana.‪
At this dinner in 2005, featuring Justice Scalia's remarks, I sat with the late J. Patrick Rooney. We had an exchange at the table that has never left me. I told my mentor, and friend, that I admired him for staying in the fight when he could be on a golf course or on a beach instead of working the halls of Congress for school choice and health savings accounts. Pat scowled at me and said, "We are not put on this earth for our amusement or enjoyment, we are put on this earth to do our d--n duty.'
Now comes the time for all of us to do our duty in this battle to preserve all that makes America great. If you can give, give. If you can speak, speak. If you can write, write. If you can run, run. But do all you can. Now is the moment.
The Bible says, "If the foundations crumble, how can the righteous stand?" The foundations of this country are found in our Declaration of Independence, and in the spirit of personal responsibility and equality of opportunity that beats in the heart of every American.‪
Through the work of The American Spectator, you have done your part to preserve that foundation. Now we must do more. And we will not fight alone. Winston Churchill said before Congress in 1941, "He must indeed have a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below, of which we have the honor to be faithful servants." There is a great purpose being worked out and, as President Bush said so many times, the Almighty's purpose is freedom.
You have a role to play; a duty to fulfill. You are to be the faithful servants of freedom in this hour. You've gathered in this nation's Capital to take your stand for what makes this country great. A Capital filled with memorials to America's heroes, men and women whose faces are carved in bronze, whose names adorn monuments, and just across that river, whose remains lie quietly as testament to their heroism for our freedom. In their time they did their part. Now it's your turn.‪
Let us do as generations of Americans have done before, let us stand for what has always been the source of American greatness: our faith in God and our freedom. And if we hold that banner high, I believe with all my heart, the good and great people of this land will rally to our cause. We will take this Congress back in 2010 and we will take this country back in 2012, so help us God.

Glenn Beck Reveals His Plan for Refounding America

Open Letter from Glenn Beck to the country:

Friends,

What an amazing few days on the road this has been. Your spirits have been high, your faith strong and your spine unbendable. I ended my multiday book tour at The Villages with what had been billed as a rally but could be better described as a candid citizen-to-citizen chat.
Today, I have stopped looking for a leader to show us the way out because I have come to realize that the only one who can truly save our country...is us. To change America's course we need to change ourselves, our expectations and our willingness to accept the unacceptable. When we refuse to allow our children to receive a trophy for participation, we are on the road to restoring the meaning of merit in our Republic. When we insist that no one is too big to fail, we will be able to learn from our mistakes, and when we demand that we are self-reliant, we will ensure that others can rely on us, not the government.
There is much to do, much to learn and time is of the essence. While I will be explaining the entire Plan over the coming weeks and months, I did want to give you a preview of some of the highlights:
- Education is key, and not just for our children. To that end, we will be conducting a series of conventions. These will be full-day experiences where you will be immersed in learning about topics ranging from self-reliance, community organizing, the economy and how to be a political force in your own neighborhood and country. The first one will be in Orlando at UCF Arena on March 27th. You will also be able to vote to have a convention in your region by clicking here.
- I have begun meeting with some of the best minds in the country that believe in limited government, maximum freedom and the values of our Founders. I am developing a 100 year plan. I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting, using only the battlefield of ideas.
- All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.
- On August 28, 2010, I ask you, your family and neighbors to join me at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.

Wave of Debt Payments Facing US Government

By: Edmund L. Andrews
The New York Times

The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.

But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.

The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone.

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.

“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”

So far, the demand for Treasury securities from investors and other governments around the world has remained strong enough to hold down the interest rates that the United States must offer to sell them. Indeed, the government paid less interest on its debt this year than in 2008, even though it added almost $2 trillion in debt.

The government’s average interest rate on new borrowing last year fell below 1 percent. For short-term i.o.u.’s like one-month Treasury bills, its average rate was only sixteen-hundredths of a percent.

“All of the auction results have been solid,” said Matthew Rutherford, the Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary in charge of finance operations. “Investor demand has been very broad, and it’s been increasing in the last couple of years.”

The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.

“What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter,” said William H. Gross, managing director of the Pimco Group, the giant bond-management firm. “The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.”

The current low rates on the country’s debt were caused by temporary factors that are already beginning to fade. One factor was the economic crisis itself, which caused panicked investors around the world to plow their money into the comparative safety of Treasury bills and notes. Even though the United States was the epicenter of the global crisis, investors viewed Treasury securities as the least dangerous place to park their money.

On top of that, the Fed used almost every tool in its arsenal to push interest rates down even further. It cut the overnight federal funds rate, the rate at which banks lend reserves to one another, to almost zero. And to reduce longer-term rates, it bought more than $1.5 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and government-guaranteed securities linked to mortgages.

Those conditions are already beginning to change. Global investors are shifting money into riskier investments like stocks and corporate bonds, and they have been pouring money into fast-growing countries like Brazil and China.

The Fed, meanwhile, is already halting its efforts at tamping down long-term interest rates. Fed officials ended their $300 billion program to buy up Treasury bonds last month, and they have announced plans to stop buying mortgage-backed securities by the end of next March.

Eventually, though probably not until at least mid-2010, the Fed will also start raising its benchmark interest rate back to more historically normal levels.

The United States will not be the only government competing to refinance huge debt. Japan, Germany, Britain and other industrialized countries have even higher government debt loads, measured as a share of their gross domestic product, and they too borrowed heavily to combat the financial crisis and economic downturn. As the global economy recovers and businesses raise capital to finance their growth, all that new government debt is likely to put more upward pressure on interest rates.

Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

But that could seem like a relatively modest pinch. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year.

The White House estimates that the government will have to borrow about $3.5 trillion more over the next three years. On top of that, the Treasury has to refinance, or roll over, a huge amount of short-term debt that was issued during the financial crisis. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead.

To lock in low interest rates in the years ahead, Treasury officials are trying to replace one-month and three-month bills with 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities. That strategy will save taxpayers money in the long run. But it pushes up costs drastically in the short run, because interest rates are higher for long-term debt.

Adding to the pressure, the Fed is set to begin reversing some of the policies it has been using to prop up the economy. Wall Street firms advising the Treasury recently estimated that the Fed’s purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities pushed down long-term interest rates by about one-half of a percentage point. Removing that support could in itself add $40 billion to the government’s annual tab for debt service.

This month, the Treasury Department’s private-sector advisory committee on debt management warned of the risks ahead.

“Inflation, higher interest rate and rollover risk should be the primary concerns,” declared the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a group of market experts that provide guidance to the government, on Nov. 4.

“Clever debt management strategy,” the group said, “can’t completely substitute for prudent fiscal policy.”

This story originally appeared in the The New York Times

'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years

By STEPHEN MOORE

Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

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The art for a 1999 postage stamp.

Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.
Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.
For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.
In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that?
These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act." Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion -- in roughly his first 100 days in office.
The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."
When Rand was writing in the 1950s, one of the pillars of American industrial might was the railroads. In her novel the railroad owner, Dagny Taggart, an enterprising industrialist, has a FedEx-like vision for expansion and first-rate service by rail. But she is continuously badgered, cajoled, taxed, ruled and regulated -- always in the public interest -- into bankruptcy. Sound far-fetched? On the day I sat down to write this ode to "Atlas," a Wall Street Journal headline blared: "Rail Shippers Ask Congress to Regulate Freight Prices."
In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal -- stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in "the public good." The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything.
The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in "the public interest."
Ultimately, "Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.
One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:
Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"
Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"
"And you'll obey any order I give?"
"Implicitly!"
"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."
"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"
"Fire your government employees."
"Oh, no!"
Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax "for purposes of fairness" as Barack Obama puts it.
David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand's ideas, explains that "the older the book gets, the more timely its message." He tells me that there are plans to make "Atlas Shrugged" into a major motion picture -- it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. "We don't need to make a movie out of the book," Mr. Kelley jokes. "We are living it right now."
Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal editorial page.